


nothing on your mind

by SisterLoquacious



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: F/M, Gen, M/M, Multi, Post-The Raven King, The Raven King Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-26
Updated: 2016-04-26
Packaged: 2018-06-04 15:29:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6664219
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SisterLoquacious/pseuds/SisterLoquacious
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>He hadn’t pictured this: sitting in the passenger seat of a car that ran with no engine; Richard Gansey the Third sprawled obscenely in the back seat, Blue Sargent in the driver’s seat; all three shouting along to Tubthumping. This car needed no fuel, and its occupants needed no destination, but Henry had always sort of wanted to see the Grand Canyon.</i>
</p><p>Or: Three times someone got Henry Cheng's number, that first summer.</p><p>Spoilers for The Raven King.</p>
            </blockquote>





	nothing on your mind

**Author's Note:**

> MAJOR SPOILERS FOR THE RAVEN KING
> 
> This is un-betaed, rushed, and is probably a little OOC as I try to get my head around character developments that took place in TRK. Welcome to the new era, y'all.
> 
> Title is from Josh Pyke's song The Summer.

**i.**

Henry Cheng and Ronan Lynch weren’t friends.

 

They weren’t _not_ friends, though. It was like that time in Harry Potter, with the troll. Henry suspected that after you’d seen someone dying, drooling demonic black shit everywhere, it was natural to develop some sort of bond. A kinship, maybe. Henry still not-so-privately suspected that Ronan lacked a soul, but he was slowly beginning to weigh the opposing evidence:

 

Firstly, he’d gifted Blue that damn magic car.

 

And Blue fucking _loved_ it, so Henry loved it, too. That afternoon he’d sat in the backseat of the replica Pig, lazily playing Candy Crush while Gansey valiantly supervised Blue’s driving practice in the front lot of Monmouth Manufacturing. The A/C was just as shit in this car as in Gansey’s, but Blue sang along when Henry blasted Destiny’s Child from his shiny rainbow phone, so he ignored the way his thighs stuck to the leather seats, the way Gansey’s hand settled on top of Blue’s on the stick shift.

 

Ronan had given him that experience, sort of. Not the bit with the sweat, or the bit where Henry felt way too damn drawn to these two kids he’d only just befriended, but. The car. He’d given them that.

 

Secondly, the middle Lynch brother always came with that raven and that creepy child.

 

“I’m a psychopomp,” said the girl to Henry, the fifth time they’d met. He squatted next to her in doorway to 300 Fox Way’s kitchen, cup of foot tea in hand. They both watched as Blue and Ronan bickered and lazily swatted at each other: or maybe Henry watched, and the girl stood guard. She was fiercely protective, for a little thing with hooves and a fashion sense straight out of 2005. “Or maybe not, anymore. I don’t know. Ronan calls me Opal.”

 

“Hi, Opal,” said Henry, adjusting his weight to his left foot. He heard the floorboards squeak behind them, the unmistakable cadence signifying Richard Gansey’s presence. Gansey grasped his shoulder. Henry’s heart pounded from the foot tea, or something. He was dying, probably. “I’m Henry.”

 

“I know,” Opal said, simply. Then, “Hi, Gansey.”

 

She was getting braver, more joyful, with each passing week. Henry pretended not to notice this, or to care, because Ronan Lynch might’ve been best friends with Henry’s new best friends, but that didn’t mean they were _friends._

 

It was still sort of sad to leave Opal behind, though.

 

They left on the first of August, at high noon. Blue had wanted to leave at dawn, ever sensible, but they’d spent the day before hiking in the mountains where Cabeswater used to be—Ronan’s suggestion—and so the three of them had slept in, a knotted pile of bodies on Gansey’s vast bed at Monmouth. By the time they’d packed the last of their things into the replica Pig, Ronan was kicking rocks around the lot, dust following in the wake of his heavy boots with each swing.

 

Henry averted his eyes while Ronan said goodbye to Blue and Gansey. He thought it was probably the respectful thing to do.

 

“Cheng,” Ronan called, before Henry could climb into the back seat of the bright orange car. “C’mon, man.”

 

“You wanna bring it in?” Henry said brightly, pacing towards Ronan with his arms spread wide.

 

Ronan ducked out of the way, laughing, then gently nudged Henry’s shin. An affectionate kick, Henry thought. Blue often did the same.

 

“Look,” Ronan said, finally settling. He stuffed his hands into the pockets of his jeans. To their side, Henry could hear Blue and Gansey pointedly busying themselves with rearranging the bags in the boot of the car.

 

“Get them back in one piece?” Henry said.

 

“What? No. I just—look, thanks for being cool,” Ronan said.

 

Henry knew he was cool. He also knew that he _wasn’t_ cool, not really. He’d recently discovered that he and Ronan Lynch had that in common.

 

It was possible that the only cool person in the whole town was Opal, but Henry might have been biased. She’d gifted him some tree bark for the journey that was, sources reported, particularly tasty.

 

“I’m not good with people,” Ronan continued, haltingly. “But those two are—you’re good. You know?”

 

“Thanks for your approval,” said Henry drily, throwing up horns at Ronan. Ronan laughed again. They fist-bumped. Henry felt very manly.

 

He had always envisaged his exodus from Henrietta with the same intensity that some people imagined their weddings. He’d had multiple ideas, each dutifully presented to ChengTwo, who swayed towards affectionate mockery. Idea Number One: he would skip town in a helicopter to a soundtrack of Madonna’s Greatest Hits, flying away into the sunset. Idea Number Two: he would elope with a beautiful and mysterious visitor, returning only on full moons to water Mrs Woo’s flowers and spin tales of his adventures to the guys at Litchfield. Idea Number Three: he’d go back to Vancouver, become an extra on Teen Wolf, and slowly worm his way up the food chain until there was an Asian werewolf on prime time. Fucking _sick._

 

He hadn’t pictured this: sitting in the passenger seat of a car that ran with no engine; Richard Gansey the Third sprawled obscenely in the back seat, Blue Sargent in the driver’s seat; all three shouting along to Tubthumping. This car needed no fuel, and its occupants needed no destination, but Henry had always sort of wanted to see the Grand Canyon.

 

 

 

**ii.**

Gansey and Blue started sleeping together two months into their trip.

 

Or, well. Sort of sleeping together, because it was hard to find privacy when three people were living in each other’s pockets. At every motel, they shared a room. At every pit stop, they shared a cup of shitty coffee. Blue and Henry, they’d discovered, even shared roughly the same measurements, and he was very much enjoying his newfound boho-chic, thanks.

 

He wasn’t enjoying laying in the dark, night after night, listening to Blue and Gansey fumble in the next bed over.

 

There was probably something very Shakespearian about this sort of suffering, Henry thought. Very Jane Austen. Very—like, very Hermione putting up with Ron dating Lavender Brown, except he wasn’t sure who was supposed to be who in that equation, so maybe not. It was a bit overwrought, anyway.

 

To their credit, Blue and Gansey were mostly quiet. And Henry didn’t think they were doing a whole lot, from what he could make out, but they were doing _something_. And sometimes—though he would never admit it—sometimes, when Blue’s breath hitched, or when Gansey suddenly went awfully, damningly silent, Henry _wanted._

 

He didn’t know what he wanted, or who, or why. He hadn’t been lying to Blue that day, when she’d reminded him that she was with Gansey, and he’d told her that he was Henrysexual. She hadn’t asked, and he hadn’t continued, but what he really meant by that was that his goddamn sexuality was _anybody’s fucking guess._

The next morning, Gansey met Henry’s eyes knowingly.

 

That was the thing, wasn’t it? Gansey and Henry, they knew each other. They clicked. They—

 

“I know you want to kiss Blue,” Gansey said quietly, over the sound of Blue showering in the poky adjacent bathroom. Henry coughed into the sleeve of his pyjama shirt, a tie-dyed gift from the Sargent repertoire. “I—I won’t speak for her, but. I’m okay with that. I know a lot about wanting to kiss Blue Sargent.”

 

Henry remained silent, so Gansey moved on, looking far more serene than Henry felt the topic warranted. Orgasms would do that to a guy, Henry figured. Maybe especially the kind of guy who did shit like refer to people by their full names, and literally die twice before the age of eighteen, and trust Henry to drive him towards his certain death. Or, like, trust Henry to drive _at all._

 

Henry Cheng was good at ignoring things, though. Less good than a Gansey, maybe. Their styles were slightly different. Gansey repressed, Henry had noticed, and there were a lot of things slowly bubbling their way to the surface now that he had a future stretching bright ahead of him. Henry didn’t repress; he _obfuscated._ Why all the politics, Henry? _Oh, you know, gotta pad my resume, ha ha._ You ever kissed a girl, Cheng? _Look at me, Jiang, I’m a fucking babe magnet._

Gansey had simultaneously clocked him and missed the point entirely. It wasn’t just that Henry wanted to kiss Blue, that he wanted to be the one making her gasp quietly into the dark of a motel room. It was that he wanted Gansey to be there, too. It was that he wanted to make _Gansey_ make all those noises, wanted him to stop having to be so nobly quiet in fear of waking Henry. It was that he wanted them to not _have to_ fear waking Henry.

 

But Gansey didn’t bring the topic back up, and they all went for pancakes, and that night, Henry felt his chest lighten with relief when Gansey went straight to sleep.

 

 

 

**iii.**

“Is now a bad time?” said Adam Parrish wryly, when Blue opened the door to their AirBNB in New Haven, Connecticut.

 

“Oh!” she said, and promptly flung herself at him.

 

Adam took a step back with her sudden weight, then hugged her to him tightly. It was November, and while he knew that Blue and Gansey and Cheng were planning on a visit, he’d only found out this morning that they meant _now._ It was bad timing, sort of—Adam had what felt like a million essays to write, a million dollar-store trinkets to send back to Opal, a million words for Ronan that he could never do justice.

 

 _I know you won’t ask,_ he’d ended his last email, earlier that morning; _but of course I’m coming down for X-mas. How are Chainsaw and Opal? Send me photos so I can put them on my desk in little heart-shaped frames. My roommate’s from Pennsylvania and thinks my Southern farmer teenage father boyfriend is great._

Boyfriend. That was a thing, now.

 

Blue’s skin was warm against him in the November cold, and oh, Adam thought as she pulled back, that was a lot of. Skin.

 

“Come in,” Blue grinned, crossing her arms to ward off the chill. “Henry’s probably decent by now.”

 

“ _Pshaw_ ,” went Cheng, appearing in a top that appeared to be mostly held together with safety pins and hope. “I’m _always_ decent.”

 

“This is weird,” Adam noted, meaning both Cheng's adopted mannerism and the haphazard scene before him. The apartment was white and sparse, the minimalism of the wealthy, but Blue’s clothes were strewn on every possible surface and even some impossible ones. Gansey’s clothes were nowhere to be seen, and neither was Gansey himself.

 

Solemnly, Cheng saluted him.

 

“Gansey’s gone out for breakfast,” Blue said, conspiratorially. “He’s discovered egg soldiers. Want a seat?”

 

Adam remained standing, primarily because he’d been sitting at a desk all week long, but also because the studio apartment didn’t actually seem to offer that much in the way of available surfaces. The kitchenette counter barely offered enough space for a single toaster, the chairs at the small dining table were hidden under bags, and the queen-sized mattress looked rumpled in a way that made Adam respectfully avert his eyes.

 

“We could just meet him there,” he suggested instead, mentally counting his remaining spending money for the week. He could afford a cheap breakfast—or, well, _lunch,_ given it was nearing noon. Not that his friends seemed to have gotten the message: he deeply suspected that Blue lacked pants under her long top, and Henry Cheng wore only one incredibly sparkly shoe. “You coming like that, Henry?”

 

“Duh,” said Henry cheerfully, though he appeared to be already scouring the mess for a second shiny sneaker and thus mostly addressed Adam from over his shoulder. “ _Blue_ , where’s my sneaker?”

 

“Dunno. Where’s my bra?”

 

“The kitchen sink, I think. Remember?”

 

Adam stood back, allowing the two to assemble outfits that were more or less presentable to the students of Yale and surrounding townsfolk, Adam not included. Henry mournfully pulled a yellow sweater over his top; Blue did something complicated with a bra underneath her own shirt, then pulled on thigh high socks. Somewhere on the streets of New Haven, Gansey was undoubtedly wearing something equally colorful as the two before him.

 

It was odd, Adam mused, how well everything had worked out. Gansey and Blue and Henry off around the country; Ronan still in Henrietta, always accompanied by a raven and a raven-girl. And Adam had made it, too.

 

He linked elbows with Blue, who was already hand-in-hand with Henry Cheng.

 

That bit was maybe a little surprising, but not really.

 

“ _All was well_ ,” said Henry Cheng, just before they filed out of the door. “Look, right? Harry Potter reference. This is the epilogue, except none of us have kids. Except Lynch. Oh, I guess that means you have kids, too, Parrish—“

 

“Henry,” said Adam easily, stretching around Blue to shove Cheng’s shoulder. “You’re totally Ron. It’s fine.”

 

“I don’t think Parrish ever read Harry Potter,” Cheng whispered dramatically to Blue, who Adam knew had never read Harry Potter, either.

 

Blue just smiled, though. And when they ran into Gansey a little ways down the street, Gansey smiled too, and Adam smiled, and Henry Cheng smiled. Adam wished that Ronan and Noah were here, too, but—Henry Cheng was good.

 

Unexpected, still, but good.


End file.
